Many cabinets, and other enclosed containers, are equipped with sliding doors. While such configurations are quite convenient to operate, this design is inherently flawed. In order to allow the doors to slide freely, the doors must be set on different planes. Accordingly, when the doors are fully closed, there is a gap that allows dust, moisture, and other undesirable material to enter into the cabinet. Furthermore, the same gap makes it hard to adequately secure the cabinet. And the separate doors are not aesthetically appealing.
Attempts have been made in the art to provide a solution to these flaws by providing sliding doors that use various means to move the doors into substantially the same plane. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,565,031, EP0124196, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,287,653 all disclose sliding door arrangements that allow the doors to slide substantially parallel to one another. In addition to the usual substantially parallel movement of the sliding doors, such attempts in the art also require the user manipulation that involves transverse and/or lateral movement as well as. EP0193504 discloses a similar device that relies on a plurality of springs, a feature that makes the operation of the device less accurate because the user must know exactly where to apply pressure in order to move the second door into substantially the same plane as the first door. Furthermore, the multitude of pieces and components that are used by such solutions make them very susceptible to breakage and constant maintenance.
Thus, it is an objective of the present invention to overcome the shortcomings of the art, and also provide a simple, cost-effective system for aligning sliding doors on substantially the same plane.